Lee University’s College of Arts and Sciences recently hosted Dr. Michael Ward to speak on “The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God: C.S. Lewis, Narnia, and the Planets.”

>More than 100 students, staff, and faculty gathered to hear Ward’s lecture which drew from ideas addressed in his book, “Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis.” He asserts that Lewis’ classic series, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” draws upon medieval notions of the seven planets in the geocentric cosmology that preceded Copernicus, with each book being influenced by one of the seven planets: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Ward drew evidence from Lewis’ academic writings and from relevant quotes by Lewis and other Inklings, members of an informal literary group founded by Lewis and associated with the University of Oxford.

A C.S. Lewis scholar, Ward is a senior research fellow of Blackfriars Hall, a private college in the University of Oxford. He is also a professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and co-editor of “The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis.”